Meet Your New $5 Bill

By consumeristcareyMarch 15, 2008

If you liked Harold And The Purple Crayon, boy are you going to love the new $5 bill. Lincoln’s last stand after the penny will inherit the same counterfeiting countermeasures found on more valuable bills, and will come bruised with a large purple five “to help those with visual impairments distinguish the denomination.’ That’s right, never again will you confuse a $5 bill for a $50 bill.

We match purple ties to green shirts without pause, but does the pairing work for currency? Tell us what you think in our poll, after the jump.

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Oh, man. Please U.S. Mint, please don’t do this to my money. There’s GOT to be a better way to counterfeit-proof my money. Why can’t we go to plastic money, like Australia? Their money actually looks pretty cool, albeit a bit rainbow-y for my taste. Maybe each of the bills could be a different shade/hue of green, if we need to go the multicolor route?

Protective measures are one thing, but there has to be a better way than making my cash look like a bloody bowling shoe, or like five different kinds of baby food mixed together. Please, do it for Abe.

If they keep tinkering with the look of currency, it will be increasingly easier to counterfeit. Who can keep up with this?

Counterfeiters today know that cash is not the easier hit — it’s business checks, For $10 you can general checks for any business and use them effectively with trusting people Read: “The Art of the Steal” if you own or are responsible for a business, very informative.

Don’t they realize that the original bills with no fancy graphics/colors are still in circulation? Why would you try to make these funny new ones when you can easily print out the old ones. Our government seems to be completely out of touch.

@BugMeNot2: Yeah! That’d be great, the old bills were works of art – although I think we should change the heads to those of the presidents currently featured on the bills, instead of miscellaneous mustachioed men that most people can’t identify (or maybe they can? I never had an American History class).

Perhaps with less of that charming ‘nuclear glow’ green. But apart from that, definitely.

As a recent immigrant from the UK I am constantly worried that in a dark bar or cab I’ll be counting out a pile of ones and accidentally slip a twenty in. I’m so used to having notes which are a different size as well as color.

As the parent of a vision-impaired kid, I think it’s great. It’s not an incredible expense to produce the new bills once the Mint gets them up and running, and will help a significant portion of the population. What’s not to like?

Where is the poll option for “looks like ass”? Maybe the idea is to make the most horrendous looking bill possible so counterfeiters won’t want to counterfeiter it.

Seriously, are there still counterfeiter out there? I thought the “cool” way was identify theft. A lot easier to harvest some stolen creditcards and just go to an atm than get a machine / process of generating money fake money.

@eskilla:

Guy on left is Ulysses Grant (Civil War general / president). Dunno about guy on right.

First, off, it’s very ugly. But that’s another story for a different message board. The big Helvetica “5” is dumb. And is that a swarm of bees about to attack the Lincoln memorial?

That being said, I understand that they need to protect our precious 5 from the evil Chinese and Iranian pressman who churn our currency out all day on their high tech Xerox presses.

But we’ve been using the same style and size currency now for almost a century, and this “new” design doesn’t do any of the crap they actually say it will. There aren’t any real designers creating this shite. If they really wanted to create a new design for the currency, they should hire some designers to take care of it. And no, not just to make it look pretty.

It still does not touch on some pretty significant problems that have already been addressed by the currency in other countries. These problems have absolutely nothing to do with “counterfeiting” either. Besides, with the dollar so low, who the hell would want to counterfeit our bills anyway? (sarcasm)

All of the US currency does not currently have any sort of tactile *anything* on the note. Why is this needed? So blind people and vision impaired folks don’t get ripped off. All the bills we have are identical in size, printing method, and color.

Back in 2006 there was an interesting comment made by a Federal Judge declaring that US currency “shortchanges” the blind (pun intended, I’m sure). Read the article here: [www.washingtonpost.com]

This is also an issue that has been raised by the design community. Why has our government been so lax on this? It’s been conjectured that the psychology of the “greenback” is simply too much to completely change.

The new dollar also has no other technological *anything* in it to protect it from counterfeiting. Sure, you can microprint incantations and use polyurethane/beeswax based ink till the cows come home. But my Big Mac has an RFID in it and can be read by card scanners. Just check out the EURO. [www.fleur-de-coin.com]

But seriously, the current state of the dollar makes me wonder if it’s not time for a *complete* refresh. My guess is that this is just a minor update to the currency that’s been in the pipe for a while. And what better time to remind us about our money than now, when it’s at a historical low?

@BugMeNot2: guy on the right is philip sheridan, leader of the army of the shenandoah.

people don’t counterfeit $5 bills (it’s not worth the cost). counterfeiters take $5 bills, chemically process them to remove the ink & reprint larger denominations on them ($100, $50, $20). that is the purpose of embedding color dyes in the paper for the new bills. the big purple 5 is just so people don’t get confused.

You know I understand why the mint is making new designs for the bills – so it will stop counterfeiters.

…. and hopefully I don’t give ideas to counterfeiters, but why not just counterfeit the older bill designs? People still use the new & old designs, and now that people don’t see the old design as often because of the new design, it would probable be easier to slip in a counterfeit bill….. in my opinion

At my firm, one of the girls who works for me found a $100 bill in an old file that had holes punched into it. We are not sure how it got in there but she was curious on whether or not it was still legal tender. It still had the serial numbers showing and any of the other identifying factors on the bill. She took it town to the bank downstairs in our building to find out if it was still legal tender. She showed it to one teller and they said she wasn’t sure but it was probably still good and so she asked another bank employee. The other bank employee said no because it was mutilated. A manager jumped in took the bill and examined it in the light and said it would be legal tender.

Finally someone else jumped in with an opinion, took the bill from the manager’s hands and rubbed it on a sheet of white paper and the paper was clean. “It’s a fake” and hands it back to my employee. He explains that the ink on dollar bills never truly dry and that if you smudge the ink on paper it will always make a mark. My employee tells me the story and am rather surprised they gave it back to her. I thought banks were supposed to call the Secret Service or something whenever they encounter a counterfeit bill. Right now the fake $100 bill with holes punched into it is taped to my employee’s window waiting for one of the cleaning people to steal it and pass it at the local liquor store. We can’t wait.

God forbid they make the money harder to counterfit. And as someone pointed out, the new features on the $5 are to keep people from bleaching $5s and printing them like $100s. Yes, that means in a few years there will be a new $1 bill too. Well, except they’ll probly just switch to the $1 coins by then. And then you people will whine about that too, won’t you?

Yeah… we can do without the purple. And to help the blind tell the difference? Riiight… I don’t think so. The numbers are textured. I have blind relatives, and they can tell the difference between a 5 and a 50 no problem. (Much to my dismay during my younger years.)

@mac-phisto: People do actually attempt to counterfeit low-denomination bills. At the Federal Reserve Bank here in St. Louis, the workers who sort the money will tape possibly fake bills onto the window. When I was there, it was a bunch of $1 bills.

JamesBenjamin is right – this is primarily to defeat counterfeiting, specifically bleaching. Notes can somewhat easily be bleached to remove all the ink, then another denom printed on them. $100s and $5s are both the “new old” style – before a box of Froot Loops threw up on them. This makes it easy to bleach a $5 and print $100 on them. There’s still the security strip, but few people check for the proper location (they’re pretty close anyway). These will fool 99.9% of people who would accept those bills.

Still, we’re lightyears behind Australian, European, and Canadian notes. Those have different sizes, braile-ish dots, strange color patterns, UV and magnetic patterns, and in some cases clear plastic windows in the bill itself. Of course, these techniques tend to reduce durability.

Its still not near as colorful as the Canadian notes we have…I remember the first time I went to the States, I had an awful time with money because I couldn’t just tell at a glance how much I had since it all looked the same. We have blue, purple, red, bright green, etc. I think its a good idea to add a bit of color (or should I say colour, being Canuck?*grin*) And if it helps slow down counterfieting, all the better!

This is AMERICA. We do things the AMERICAN way and speak AMERICAN. We don’t want to be like you pansy other-180-paper-currency-issuing countries of the world, who thought of mixing up the bill size or some other physical way of differentiating different denominations (and also speak languages other than American).

Oh no! My bills won’t fit in my wallet the same! Blind people might be able to tell them apart without a bill reader! I might be able to get the right bill out of my wallet without a sorting system!

Seriously, has everyone noticed that all new coins and bills are just plain bad design work. They all seem to look fake and amateurish. I am all for counterfeiting countermeasures, but this shouldn’t negate the need for asthetic beauty. And we seem to get a new bill every year now so no one really knows what they should look like anymore. While I am ranting, why does the new $10 look like someone scribbled on it and dipped it in Kool-Aid?

I just got back from Melbourne. Why can’t we have cool bills with fancy printing, pretty colors, and see-through plastic inserts? Granted, I don’t want to adopt their system of coins, since having so many $1 and $2 coins really weighs your wallet down. But their bills were so nifty.

As counterintuitive as it sounds, let me quote my mom on her take (and also mine’s as well) about the newer currency designs in general: “With all the colors, it just doesn’t look like real money anymore.”

That’s got to be one HELL of an impairment if you can’t tell a five from a 50. Like all you see is an indistinct blur of color. At that point, you’re probably learning to read Braille anyway, so why not go that route? It wouldn’t depend upon the room being well-lit.

@BaysideWrestling:
Actually, depending on how they’re doing it, adding colors to ANYTHING printed can increase the cost of printing significantly. (As it can add steps to the printing process)

@smarty:
People just assume that whatever they’re used to is the RIGHT way.
Ask people what the drinking, driving, and voting ages SHOULD be, and most people will say the current ages. Ask them why, and if you get an answer besides “I don’t know” it will be something like “because that’s the way it is.”
People don’t just honor tradition, they completely avoid ever questioning it.

@TechnoDestructo: So basically you’re admitting you know nothing about vision impairments. Clears that up. My son has infantile nystagmus syndrome, which leads to visual crowding – letters and numbers scrunch together, to use a technical term. The bigger numbers and different colors DO help those with vision impairments. didn’t say blind people, I said vision impaired. Try and keep up.

And since the Bureau of Engraving (I knew that, I swear I did) uses papers and ink available only to them under penalty of federal law, I don’t see this as THAT much of an increased cost. Certainly not as much as we spend on any number of ridiculous federal grants sponsored by members of either major political party.

Okay, I get that the big-ass 5 is supposed to help those with visual impairments. It’s a wonderful goal. But couldn’t they, ya know, incorporate a big-ass 5 into the design rather than just cutting off a section of the old design and slathering a completely different, ugly, clashing number onto it? Why continue to print the old-style 5s in each corner? Why not just redesign the damn thing with one big-ass 5 (a la the Canadian hockey money linked above)?

I always thought Harold and the Purple Crayon was kind of scary…he was all alone, no one around, so he tried to keep himself company with people he drew, but they weren’t truly alive and couldn’t speak to him. He was doomed to an eternity of nothingness, trying to fill the void with imaginary things that could never be what he wanted them to be…

Interestingly, some bind are against the idea of adding braille to bills because it is a special accommodation rather than universal accessibility. These people do support different colors and different sizes of bills, however.

I find it funny that we’re getting more and more color mixed in. It’s ugly desperation at thwarting counterfeiting while maintaining our “greenback” heritage. (But really, who cares?). They’ve tried to stay away from multicolored money for quite some time. It seems that they’re beginning to realize that they can’t.

Just do it, already. Go to different sizes and different colors, and do it right. This just looks like crap warmed over.

eww… It was bad enough when the 20.00 bill started to remind me of monopoly money. But this is just plane wrong.

The American dollar used to look so neat, and orderly. Professional even. Now I have a hard time telling the difference between real money and fake money.

Although… come to think of it… I did once take a 5 as a 50 working long hours at a cash register like 10 years ago. So I do know from experience that some people target whoever looks the most tired, and tries to pass off a 5 as a 50. But even so… purple!?

I know just what this bill needs! Corporate sponsorship. Just imagine US currency looking like a scaled down version of a Nascar hood. “The new $5 bill is brought to you by Viagra, Home Depot, and Spam!”

Not knowing about your kid’s particular condition doesn’t mean I know NOTHING about visual impairments. Try considering what the information in front of you actually tells you before you take on an insulting tone.

Also, the fact that the government uses paper and inks that the public doesn’t have access to has no bearing on the cost of printing. If they can’t print the purple in the same pass as the green, it adds to the cost, significantly.

But nice of you to throw that earmarks red herring in there. That really adds to the discussion.

@Trai_Dep: Actually this is true. If you’ve ever counted large quantities of currency, you’ll notice your fingertips get ink-smudged after a while. The key to the trick is that you have to really rub the bill hard against something light enough to show the medium to pale greenish-grey smudges.

I am surprised they didn’t take the bill if they suspected it was bogus. We were always told bad bills had to be confiscated, but it was a hassle to do — paperwork and the inevitable upset on the part of the person losing the bill. Nobody gets reimbursed for a counterfit bill.

Some countries use multi-coloured bills so the illiterate can tell the difference. Considering how bad the US education system is becoming, that’s a good idea.

@tgebauer: All of the US currency does not currently have any sort of tactile *anything* on the note. Why is this needed? So blind people and vision impaired folks don’t get ripped off. All the bills we have are identical in size, printing method, and color.

British pound notes are of different size for the benefit of the blind. Maybe someone should file a disabilities act lawsuit over this.

While I would have liked for the bill to look better it’s good that it’s going to help people with vision problems.

@All Assuming It Can’t Help Those With Vision Problems: So you’re going to assume that the people who’ve already posted comments about the specific conditions this applies to are liars just because you’ve never heard of it before? It’s called Google if it’s too difficult to take someone’s word for it.

Is it orange? I’ve always said it looked “toasted”. But now that I’m looking at one…yeah, “sickly orange” is more like it.
On another note (no pun intended)
You wanna see class? Style? Panache? Then look no further than Jackson (circa 1985): [upload.wikimedia.org]